Sunday, May 8, 2016

This was the question on our minds the night before, so my girlfriend and I needed to come up with something fast. And that's when we said, why be a good wizard, when you can be evil?? We needed Dark Mark tattoos like the Death Eaters in Harry Potter. But we didn't really care for the design from the movies, so we started sketching alternate versions.

sultry snake, anyone?

We liked the sideways skull, the snake body from the upper right, and the snake head from the upper left, so I did a ten minute photoshop and pulled together those elements, played with the color and contrast, and printed it out on tattoo transfer paper that we found at the local Hobby Lobby. It's even the stuff that works with inkjet printers.

I printed four of them (just in case) and cut them cleanly off of the rest of the paper so we could still use it for other occasions down the road. You lay and thoroughly press an acetate sheet over the paper, which sandwiches the ink in thin layers of plastic and adhesive, then peel off the acetate to reveal an adhesive layer, then apply it by pressing with a little water, just like a store bought temporary tattoo. Seriously, it's that simple. I was about to write this up as a tutorial, but it just works on its own.

Unfortunately the plastic layers are a little thick, so you can see it wrinkle, but for a last minute project, we were super pleased with it!